


Yours for the Walk

by r_lee



Category: Y: The Last Man
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-03
Updated: 2009-01-03
Packaged: 2018-01-25 08:17:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1640963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/r_lee/pseuds/r_lee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After leaving California behind, Hero and Beth have a long trip ahead of them. Rated for language only.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yours for the Walk

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anythingbutblue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anythingbutblue/gifts).



 

 

"Goddammit, Santa Madre, my fucking feet hurt." Sitting down by the side of the road, she takes off her heavy backpack. It's half as tall as she is and almost as heavy. The relief on her shoulders and on her low back's immeasurable; those goddamn great cowboy boots she fought to steal somewhere outside of Tahoe have been a godsend. Who'd have ever thought the former Sarah Lawrence creative writing major-turned-EMT would've walked halfway across the goddamn country and halfway back again?

Not Hero Brown. 

After the motorcycle ran out of gas and they'd traded away all their useful commodities -- canned food, four-year-old Winstons, priceless books of matches, goddamn _tampons_ \-- to fill the tank, they eventually had to barter the bike itself for more food and a new can opener when theirs bit the dust. It's not easy keeping a pregnant chick in protein in a land where you sometimes have to eat rattlesnakes and rangy old prairie dogs for dinner. By now, both of them are really goddamn good at improvising.

"No wonder." One good-sized pebble falls out of her shoe onto the dusty road. Taking advantage, she rubs the ball of her foot, her toes. The bottoms of her socks are as black as tar, but laundry places are few and far between out here in the wild. Every now and then there's a stream and that's great -- it means a bath -- and if it's safe enough, a place to wash things out. But her primary goal isn't smelling like a rose. It's keeping Mamacita safe until that goddamn niece of hers arrives.

There's some small comfort in knowing the baby's sex ahead of time. At least a couple good things came out of that bullshit with that cunt Sister Ober. She _did_ give them the motorcycle, even if she knew it would only take them so far. It turned out to be one hell of a consolation prize.

***

Seeing as how the fucking Swiss Guard was looking for immaculate conceptions, she feels it's fitting justice that the most beautiful and maybe the only non-test-tube baby in the whole fucking world is born in an abandoned church in goddamn Tucumcari, New Mexico. At least the place is dry and clean and has another kind of Santa Madre looking down on them, and the doors lock so they can do this thing in privacy. Seeing babies safely into the world isn't something she ordinarily did as an EMT, but she knows how to do it. This won't be the first time, but it might just be the last.

"Take it easy, Mamacita. It's not time to push yet." She doesn't have calipers to measure dilation and there aren't any supplies for an epidural. All she's got are the old-fashioned things: pillows, warm water, buckets, towels, ice chips -- it's a fucking miracle the freezer in the little back room here still works -- and a whole lot of patience. This is Beth's first kid and first labors, she knows, can take a long, long time. As she gets the makeshift delivery room ready on the floor of the St. Ann Catholic Church on 4th and High, she does something she hasn't done in a long fucking time: says a little prayer. It's simple enough. _Please, God, let things go well today. This is my goddamn niece we're talking about. Let her be healthy, and let Beth get through this without any complications. I'm not equipped to do any surgery and she's the only friend I've got._

And then Hero laughs at herself. She doesn't _pray._ She gave that up for Lent a long, long time ago and never bothered to reclaim it. Maybe if she had, things would have gone differently.

Enough of that bullshit; her hands are as sterile as they're going to get and the floor's as soft and clean as they can make it. With a look of determination in her eyes, she nods to Beth. "Let's get this goddamn show on the road, amiga. It's a good day for having a baby."

***

She's torn between _can't you shut her up_ and _my fucking phantom left tit aches_ and she's not sure which one's going to win out. All she knows for sure is that if it was hard traveling before, it's twice as hard with an infant. Beth Junior's pretty good, but when that little shit cries, she cries _loudly._ It's not that Hero doesn't have a maternal bone in her body because of course she does; all women do. Sometimes, though, it's pretty fucking dormant, buried really deep. Most of the time she just keeps her goddamn mouth shut because Beth doesn't need her griping on top of learning how to take care of a newborn. It isn't like the baby pops out first followed immediately by the latest version of the user manual.

No, they get to figure it out as they go along and luckily, despite it all, there are two of them there to spell each other. In the dark of night when Beth Junior's finally asleep and Mamacita, exhausted, has fallen into her own slumber, there's sometimes this moment of absolute peace and bliss. And in that moment, Hero takes the time to just breathe in and out and marvel over the fact that _this_ little girl -- Beth Junior, her goddamn niece, the daughter of her fucking dog of a brother -- won't have to worry about grandpa being a prick. She won't have to escape to her own personal field of dreams. She won't have to go through that awkward shit with teenage boys feeling her up, wanting a piece of her, promising they won't get her pregnant, telling her they'll ignore her acne if she just lets them fuck her. She can't make the same promise for teenage _girls_ if there are any, but they'll get there when they get there. Right now her niece is only a couple weeks old and they still have the whole Texas panhandle to get through, then that slice of Oklahoma, and then half of Kansas until they get to Oldenbrook. And with a baby, they can't exactly hop a freight train and jump off wherever it's convenient.

So walking it is, and that goes a lot fucking slower with a baby. One of these towns, she's going to break into the nearest Babies 'R' Us and steal a jogging stroller or at least a baby backpack. That'll make things easier and they'll be able to hoof it again. It would be nice to get to the facility with Amp's samples _before_ Hell freezes over. It's just that no one (and probably Yorick least of all) expected there was going to be a detour for new life along the way. She can't _wait_ until he finds out.

The other thing she does in those late-night moments of absolute peace and bliss is rest her head in her hands and listen to the sounds and think about the past years since the plague hit. She remembers Joe. She remembers him dying in her arms, blood pouring out of his eyes, his nose, his mouth, his ears. She remembers Victoria. She remembers killing that poor little bitch with the mail carrier bag and she remembers eating cat food. She remembers almost killing her brother, and she remembers apologizing to him, and she remembers agreeing to go to the little church -- Saint Bernadette's -- in Cooksfield to deliver Yorick's letter. What a dickhead he was to send her all that way just to kiss Beth off. When she sees him again, she'll give him a fucking piece of her mind.

But until then, she takes those stolen moments and, like every single Polaroid she carries, weaves them into memories. When they're bad ones she rips them up and lets the wind carry them away but when they're good, she fucking _treasures_ them. Shit, this is almost like having a family and in this day and age, those are more valuable than cigarettes. More valuable than matches. More valuable than gasoline or electric engines or lighters or canned food. More valuable even than every bitch's best friend a week out of every month: the amazingly rare tampon. 

Shit, who ever thought the whole goddamn _world_ would start to cycle together? 

Not Hero Brown.

Live and fucking learn.

***

"Come on, Mamacita. Let's hit the goddamn road."

Beth gives her a weary look, sunglasses pushed up to cover that scar across her face, a baseball hat perched on her head. The days are starting to get chilly and the nights downright suck and it's a good fucking thing they're almost there. "What goddamn road?"

From her perch in the backpack, Beth Junior coos and reaches out her tiny hand to touch silk as they move along. Beth's next words are so weary, so quiet they're almost imperceptible. "Wow, check it out, Junior. More corn."

There's nothing to do with _that_ line but smirk: it's been a long, long walk.

 


End file.
